Skip to main content

Dynamic Templates Let Your Readers Decide How To View Your Blog

One odd feature of the dynamic templates - giving your readers the choice how they want to view your blog - is a detail that not everybody seems to get.

In the ongoing discussion What do you think of Dynamic Views?, we see some dissenting opinions.
I don't like the fact that readers can change the way they view my blog. I want things to be viewed the way I set them up, and not have them be changeable by the viewer.
Personally, as long as each view lets some people view my blog, I'm happy to let anybody select the template that lets them view the blog, as it pleases them.

As a blog publisher, my goal is to provide content, that's interesting and useful to my readers.

If all of the Dynamic Templates display the blog posts so my readers can read the posts, why should I care what format they select, to display the posts?

I chose to show my test blog - Musings, using the Magazine view, as the default. If some people choose to continue to read the content using Magazine, that's OK. If others decide that Timeslide is more their preference, that's fine too. The people using Timeslide to view the blog are still reading the blog - and maybe some people using Timeslide are people who might not choose to stay, if Magazine is the only choice.

You can't display this blog, using a dynamic template, any more. You may wish to evaluate dynamic views, for your blog, very carefully.

Personally, I'll let my readers decide. Their computers, their decision. But, it's your blog - and in the end, it's your choice.

Comments

Iben said…
I just think it's odd/poor that you can't change anything (yet) in the dynamic views (even small things like a header banner) and pages, widgets etc are all ripped away in the dynamic views :/
Adam said…
This is a nice post. Sometimes I think bloggers let their pride of authorship turn them into control freaks, fruitlessly trying to set everything in stone. It's a doomed project on the web anyway.

I do regret that Blogger has not made it possible to link directly to the subviews of Flipcard.

Flipcard > Date, for instance, makes a neat little histogram of blog posts over time. I can tell my readers, "Click here and then hunt around for the Date link on the new page that you will get." But I would much prefer just giving them a direct link to giving them instructions.

It's a little strange an un-Blogger-like, the way it is now.

Popular posts from this blog

Adding A Link To Your Blog Post

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".